Hello there, Green Room readers! Happy to be back with “Song Spotlights” after a brief hiatus. Last time I was here, I spent a lot of time gushing about Natasha, Pierre… and my lingering fascination with War and Peace, and very little time on my usual shtick—that shtick being, Everything Old is New Again, or, […]
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My column is Song Spotlights, but before I can focus on this particular number from David Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, I need to share my feelings on adapting doorstopper novels, the looming legacy of Eponine, and naturally, War and Peace. I read War and Peace in college, and I would […]
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Romantic duets are fun. So are comic duets. What could be better, then, than a comedic romantic duet? From “All Or Nuthin’” to “Take Me Or Leave Me,” musical theatre has thrived on this type of song. Adam Gwon’s duet “Fine” from Ordinary Days is a welcome addition to the canon. Ordinary Days focuses on […]
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I’ve talked quite a bit in this series about contemporary musical theatre’s unreached pop crossover potential. While our Top-40 dreams remain for the most part unrealized, I do forget that we have hits within our own community. Recital standards like “Taylor the Latte Boy” and “Stars and the Moon” come to mind. Georgia Stitt’s “Not […]
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Musical theatre, from an outsider’s perspective, tends to get flack for not being “serious” art. And certainly in the pre-Okalahoma! heyday, excepting the occasional Showboat, musical theatre was dramatically simplistic and rather style over substance. Similarly, comedy as an art form has also tended to suffer when paired against heavy drama, so a musical comedy […]
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I’ve spent a lot of time in this series talking about the Golden Age Musical’s influence on our NMT writers. I’ve also touched upon stand-alone songs before, but that particular song was still very much in the classical musical theatre mold. Drew Gasparini’s “Valley High,” on the other hand, is influenced by a different musical […]
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Rewrites are essential in every storytelling medium, but theatre remains the one where the most can change for a product’s legacy. A film can only be edited so much; television is so immediate that it’s forever fixed. A play or a musical, on the other hand, is always changing just by the very nature of […]
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A few weeks ago, we discussed the disconnect between the actual state of contemporary musical theatre, and what “Golden Age” die-hards perceive it to be. Reality: a thriving group of creative people humming along and tapping away (mmhmmm). Perception: a cacophony of “blecch.” Cacophonous because contemporary musical theatre reflects rap, rock, and all the wacky […]
The post SONG SPOTLIGHT: Let Me Fall appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Many (but not all) musicals are adaptations. Songwriting teams have found inspiration in plays, novels, film, television, comic strips and even paintings (obligatory Sondheim reference #1). The challenge that these teams face is to create original material around the existing material. It’s a necessary challenge, because those other forms don’t tell stories with song. Even […]
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Welcome back to Song Spotlights! Before we dive in, I wanted to give a little background about the inspiration behind this series. Once upon a time, in a class on the American Musical, my professor declared his unofficial death date for the Golden Age as 1981 (Merrily We Roll Along and its original flop production—clearly […]
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Welcome to Song Spotlights, where I focus on one of the many great songs available for purchase at NewMusicalTheatre.com’s kick-ass store. This week, we’re looking at Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s song “Hometown Hero’s Ticker Tape Parade” from their musical Dogfight. Dogfight is based on a 1991 film starring River Phoenix and Lilli Taylor. It’s about the unexpected […]
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